The invention relates generally to power-driven conveyors and more particularly to methods for preparing parcels for sorting.
In typical parcel-sorting systems, a bulk flow of parcels (envelopes and packages) is distributed to a number of individual conveyors. A human operator at each conveyor arranges the parcels on an adjacent conveyor so that they are facing up and in a single file. The face-up single files of parcels are inducted onto a main conveyor where they are scanned so that they can be appropriately sorted downstream. This process is labor-intensive and paced by the operators.